Tagged with: Florida, Northwestern, Southern Illinois, Tennis Recruiting Network, Virginia

The Tennis Recruiting Network (TRN) released it’s Winter Rankings of the Top 25 Women’s Recruiting Classes for the Class of 2017 and coming in at No. 1 was Jeff Wallace’s Georgia Bulldogs. Wallace signed a pair of blue chippers for next fall in Oklahoma’s Morgan Coppoc (11.16) and California’s Annette Goulak (10.67) along with Katarina Jokic (12.23) from Bosnia/Herzegovina. Coppoc is the top rated recruit in the Gulf States and has been ranked as high as sixth in the country while Goulak is the fourth rated recruit in California and has been ranked as high as 19th in the country. Jokic achieved a career high ITF junior ranking of 36 and has been ranked as high as 604 in the WTA rankings. 

UCLA’s Stella Sampras Webster signed TRN’s No. 2 class with Illinois’s Caroline Dolehide (12.40) and Louisiana’s Helen Altick (10.53) set to join the Bruins next fall. Dolehide has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the country while Altick has been ranked as high as No. 12. To view the entire top 25 click on this link. 

TRN released its men’s top 25 last week with Peter Wright’s signing class at Cal ranked No. 1, Bryan Shelton’s class at Florida No. 2, and Billy Martin’s class at UCLA No. 3. To view the full men’s list click on this link.

After a busy weekend of dual-match action I wanted to highlight some teams and individuals that were the cream of the crop. No men’s team had a better weekend than Florida with the Gators picking up wins over No. 6 UCLA and No. 8 USC during the Pac-12/SEC Showdown. Florida sophomores Alfredo Perez and McClain Kessler, freshman Johannen Ingildsen, and senior Elliott Orkin each won both of their matches in straight sets. Perez only dropped 10 games in wins over No. 11 Gage Brymer and No. 28 Logan Smith at No. 1. Orkin defeated No. 88 Nick Crystal and Evan Zhu at No. 3, Kessler defeated No. 114 Thibault Forget and No. 90 Joseph Di Giulio at No. 4, and Ingildsen defeated Logan Staggs and Riley Smith at No. 5. Florida will attempt to beat a third straight top 10 team when it goes to Virginia this coming Saturday.  

Virginia kicked off its season and went 3-0 with road wins over Vanderbilt, No. 15 Kentucky, and Louisville. Freshman Carl Soderlund and juniors Henrik Wiersholm and Alex Ritschard each went 3-0 with neither Wiersholm or Ritschard dropping a set. 

Northwestern played three matches in three days and after crushing Boise State and Harvard it was challenged by Duke but still came out on top. Northwestern senior Strong Kirchheimer only dropped 12 games in his three straight set wins at No. 1 while fellow senior Konrad Zieba also went 3-0 with three straight sets wins at No. 3. 

 

 

They have been playing college tennis at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, since 1924 but unfortunately this will be the last year after the school announced that it would be discontinuing both the men’s and women’s programs in a cost-cutting measure that it expects to save the school $660,000 annually. The SIU men’s program has won 789 matches all-time and 18 conference championships including a share of the title just last season. The women’s program began in 1975 and has won 569 matches all-time and two conference championships.

Unfortunately the writing had been on the wall for close to a year because SIU played most of last season in limbo not knowing if there’d be a next season and then right before the conference tournament the school announced they’d be back for this season. In the off season long-time men’s head coach Dann Nelson departed for UTRGV, largely due to the instability of the SIU program, and then the school announced that it wouldn’t be replacing Nelson but would just make women’s head coach Audra Anderson oversee both programs. 

The state of Illinois has been especially hard hit by budget woes which has trickled down to the all the state-funded universities. SIU joins SIU-Edwardsville, Western Illinois, and Bradley as schools in Illinois that have dropped its men’s programs in the last four years. SIU’s full release includes a Q&A that talks about why the cuts were made and what will happen to the players currently on scholarship.

The last men home match will be on April 1 against Wichita State while the last women’s home match will be on April 15 against Missouri State.